Tag Archives: Sheriff Joe

Currently the Department of Homeland Security can delegate immigration enforcement activities to local law enforcement departments. The department’s own audits have cited many failures with these programs, including the ability to protect from human rights abuses.

The local enforcement of national immigration policies only serves to tear families apart and contribute to racial profiling, vigilantism, and a fear of law enforcement that threatens the safety of all our communities.

I just sent a letter to President Obama urging him to put an end to these programs. Can you join me and send a letter too? Just click on the picture to send your letter:

Please note that because the situation in Arizona is fluid, plans may shift on short notice. Even if SB 1070 does not go into effect, we will be taking action, in solidarity with local groups such as Puente, to call for immigration reform. Our goal on the ground will be rapid response, plugging into the actions coordinated by our local partners, and supporting their work with actions of our own. Please check back frequently for updates as events unfold:

Romley responded Wednesday by slamming Thomas’ administration for not requiring the sheriff to provide enough evidence to go to trial, instead hoping that those charged would just plead guilty.

His ethical obligation as a prosecutor requires that, he said.

“With a case such as that, to prove that case in trial you have to have certified copies from (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) that these people were here illegally,” Romley said. “The county attorney’s office never required that (of the sheriff’s office) in the past. Never required it of them. It was sloppy work, it was a lazy person’s work.”

Thomas said Romley was abandoning a proven method of prosecuting illegal immigrants and making sure they don’t come back once they’re deported.

“We have won, at great costs, the ability to prosecute these people and make sure they have a felony conviction,” Thomas said. “And we have lost that.”

On enforcing Senate Bill 1070, Romley said he would work with county attorneys in the state’s 14 other counties to create a standard procedure for prosecutions under the law.

He said one of the elements he will push is for a full police report, to be required for each arrest, so that the reasons for the original stop are apparent.

On misdemeanors, often a police officer just writes a citation similar to a traffic ticket.

“It will eliminate hopefully some level of allegations of racial profiling,” Romley said. “More is better in this case.”

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio launched a two-day crime-suppression and illegal-immigration sweep on Monday, as dozens of protestors lined a south Phoenix street close to where the sheriff outlined the plans at a crowded press conference.

It is the second such operation since the federal government stripped Arpaio of street-level immigration patrols under the direction of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Arpaio contends he still can seek to identify illegal immigrants during street patrols using state laws against human smuggling and sanctions for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

The sheriff said his office plans to target semi-trailers and other load vehicles along alternative routes Valleywide, where human smugglers could be attempting to avoid checkpoints, such as those along Interstate 10 and Interstate 17, en route to drop houses.

“We are also noticing a significant change in travel routes,” Arpaio said. “State highways still remain the main travel paths for smugglers and their co-conspirators, but more and more vehicles are being apprehended at alternative, out-of-the-way routes.”

Arpaio said anyone who films the stops along the interstate, including what he described as “open-borders groups,” would be arrested, saying it is illegal to stop and stand unless it’s an emergency.

“These open-borders activists will be warned only once,” he said.

Dozens of protestors along Lower Buckeye Road stood with signs carrying statements, such as “We are human” and “I will not be bullied.”

During the press conference, Arpaio downplayed questions about whether he was grandstanding while Vice President Joe Biden and the national media were in town. Biden spoke in Phoenix Monday morning about the national economy.

“This is just another example of Arpaio’s lack of respect for the Obama Administration and he continues to thumb his nose at the administration,” said protestor Lydia Guzman, president of SOMOS America. Guzman was among a group of protestors across the street from the entrance of the MCSO training building.

“Arpaio’s sweep was nothing but political posturing,” she said.

Mercedes Mercado-Ochoa, a member of the Mesa Association of Hispanic Citizens, said she believes Arpaio is doing the sweeps just to impress the national media in town.

“He’s spending so much taxpayer money on these crime sweeps that it’s not funny anymore,” she said. “He should be held accountable to the taxpayers for the amount he is spending on these sweeps.”

The sweep will entail 200 members of Arpaio’s volunteer posse and reserves, as well as sheriff’s office deputies. Helicopters will also assist in the operation, which Arpaio said will have a%

MARICOPA COUNTY, AZ – Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has launched a new immigration and crime suppression sweep in the Valley.

Lieutenant Brian Lee said about 200 volunteer posse, reserves and deputies will participate in the two-day sweep that started at 5 p.m. Monday.

As of 9:45 p.m. Monday, 27 people have been taken into custody. According to officials, nine of the 27 were arrested on various state charges and do not appear to be undocumented immigrants.

Lee said the remaining 18 are currently being processed from a “load vehicle” in North Phoenix and are suspected of being in the country illegally.

Arpaio said previously this operation will take advantage of posse helicopters to visually assist ground crews in locating potential “load vehicles.”

Arpaio said this operation will have a substantial focus on human smuggling.

The sheriff&apos;s sweeps in some heavily Latino areas of metro Phoenix have drawn criticism that Arpaio&apos;s deputies racially profile people.

Arpaio said people pulled over in the sweeps were approached because deputies had probable cause to believe they had committed crimes and that it was only afterward that deputies found many of them were illegal immigrants.

Since March 2006, Sheriff&apos;s deputies have reportedly stopped hundreds of load vehicles concluding in the arrests of 1,710 smugglers and co-conspirators, under the felony human smuggling laws.

The undocumented immigration enforcement by deputies has netted a total of 3,532 arrests on state and federal charges since March 2006.

In October, the Obama administration took away Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s authority under the 287g program, which grants power to local authorities to enforce federal immigration laws.

Under the program, 100 sheriff&apos;s deputies had been trained to arrest people suspected of being in the country illegally.

However, now, those deputies must call ICE agents to make those arrests.

That lawsuit is the big Melendres v. Arpaio racial profiling case, which is being pursued by the legal firm Steptoe and Johnson, the ACLU and MALDEF on behalf of several plaintiffs who allege racial profiling at the hands of MCSO deputies. The suit seeks to establish that the MCSO is engaging in the pattern and practice of violating the civil rights of Hispanics in Maricopa County. The organization Somos America (We Are America) is one of the plaintiffs.

ACORN, however, is not a plaintiff, and has not joined the lawsuit. But, hey, those facts won’t get Arpaio’s flaccid jowls on TV with Glenn Beck or Lou Dobbs, capisce?

In the release, Arpaio, apparently at mental war with reality, suggests that ACORN is using “state and federal funds meant to help poor people to conduct a campaign against me and my officers.” Heh, like Arpaio gives a dormouse’s patootie about poor people. Save for the fact that he likes to arrest them, especially if they’re brown.